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Materiality, Sexuality and the Secret Police in Romanian State Socialism

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Materiality, Sexuality and the Secret Police in Romanian State Socialism Archiving Desire: Materiality, Sexuality and the Secret Police in Romanian State Socialism By Irina Costache A Dissertation in Gender Studies Presented to the Faculties of the Central European University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervisor: Professor Allaine Cerwonka Department of Gender Studies Budapest, Hungary CEU eTD Collection August 2014 Declaration I hereby declare that no parts of this dissertation have been submitted towards a degree at any other institution other than CEU, nor, to my knowledge does the dissertation contain any unreferenced material or ideas from other authors. CEU eTD Collection Table of contents TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................................. I ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................... V INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 1 1. BODY FORMATIONS: MATERIALITY AND INTERPELLATION .......................................................................... 9 2. ABNORMAL BODIES AND SUBJECTS ................................................................................................................ 16 The nude/ist body ................................................................................................................................................ 17 The yoga body ........................................................................................................................................................ 21 The homosexual body ......................................................................................................................................... 24 3. RE-THINKING SOCIALISM: THE POLICE-STATE ............................................................................................. 26 METHODOLOGY AND SOURCES ............................................................................................................................ 31 I.BUILDING A SOCIALIST MORALITY IN ROMANIA: A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND....... 37 1.SOCIALIST LEGISLATION IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ............................................................................... 42 2.BUILDING A SOCIALIST MORALITY AND A PROPER SOCIALIST BODY ......................................................... 53 3. SECURITATE AND THE INFORMER AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE BODY........................................................ 61 II.OVERLAPPING FANTASIES: SEXUALITY, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE SECRET POLICE IN THE 2 MAI COMMUNITY OF NUDISTS ........................................................................................ 66 1. BECOMING A DECADENT COMMUNIST ........................................................................................................... 81 2. FROM NUDISM TO EROTICISM ........................................................................................................................ 91 THE FORMATION OF THE NAKED SUBJECTS ...................................................................................................... 91 Nakedness and Sin: the meeting point between state socialism and Christianity ................. 97 The voyeuristic gaze of the Party ............................................................................................................... 100 Nakedness ............................................................................................................................................................. 105 The (clothed) secret agent ............................................................................................................................ 108 ESCAPING SOCIALISM ........................................................................................................................................ 116 3. NOSTALGIA FOR THE REAL: FANTASMATIC DESIRES AND MELANCHOLIC ATTACHMENTS ................ 121 III. A SOCIALIST SADE: SEXUALITY, YOGA AND THE BODY OF NATION .......................... 126 1. RE-ENCHANTING THE SOCIALIST WORLD: ANTI-MODERNISM, FASCISM AND NEW WAGE .............. 131 Yoga: From Western Imperialism to Socialist repression .............................................................. 136 2. A SOCIALIST SADE ......................................................................................................................................... 145 CEU eTD Collection THE MAKING OF GURU BIVOLARU .................................................................................................................. 145 Bivolaru and Sade ............................................................................................................................................. 149 Bivolaru’s sexual philosophy ........................................................................................................................ 151 Costinești- another hide-way for nudism and yoga ........................................................................... 156 3. The body of nation under threat ........................................................................................................... 160 i IV. JE EST UN AUTRE: HOMOSEXUALITY, CONFESSION AND THE POLITICS OF ABNORMALITY .................................................................................................................................... 165 1. BECOMING HOMOSEXUAL ............................................................................................................................. 174 2. ON HOMOSEXUAL LOVE ................................................................................................................................. 184 3. Queering state socialism ........................................................................................................................... 190 V. FROM TEXTUAL PLEASURES TO THE EROTIC OF THE ARCHIVE .................................. 198 1. THE MONSTER INSIDE: DEALING WITH THE SECRET POLICE ARCHIVE IN POST-COMMUNISM ........ 201 2. THE NAKED TRUTH AND THE DESIRE FOR THE ARCHIVE ........................................................................ 207 3. CAN T LOVE YOU, UNLESS I GIVE YOU UP .............................................................................................. 217 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 222 I ’ BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PRIMARY SOURCES: ................................................................................. 232 CEU eTD Collection ii Abstract This dissertation aims to write its history from a bodily and embodied perspective. This salient locus is the ideal venue to discuss issues of sexuality, gender, pleasure, emotions and sensations that are not usually part of histories of state socialism. In fact these topics are quite marginal or rendered insignificant when simply circumscribed to the “resistance” paradigm that necessarily accompanied the well-known “totalitarian” paradigm employed to describe experiences in the former Eastern Block. Making the body central to my investigation enabled me to offer three theoretical openings. First, it re-grounded the history of state socialism from the (rather abstract) discussions with ideology, politics and economics towards lived and embodied experiences. Secondly, by making the body central it allowed me to bring in a series of connected topics and phenomena, for example the constitution of bodies during socialism, either normal or deviant that would otherwise be simply relegated to the realm of socialist policy when in fact they dovetail more complex relations. Thirdly, by focusing on the body I was able to bring forth experiences and personal histories of people like the nudists, the yoga practitioners and homosexual men. Their particular CEU eTD Collection common situation within socialism, but also their evident differences, would have been lost without the common theme of the body. iii The argument that this dissertation makes is that far from being repressive, the functioning of state socialist regimes itself generated and sustained a broad range of desires and libidinal investments, thus enabling the formation of very complex gendered subjectivities and bodies. State surveillance, its gaze upon the people, its disposition of bodies was traversed by erotic desires and based on sexual pleasures. I argue that what sustained the communist regime was its scopophilia: the voyeuristic pleasure of looking, taking pleasure in looking, in the surveillance itself. Consequently, while sexuality was officially repressed, in fact I will argue that it was affirmed in the very functioning of the regime. This argument brings into discussion immediately the role of the secret police and of secrecy more generally. Secrecy becomes then a focal point of my investigation as a practice that generates arousal itself. Secrecy also elicits the desire to look, to penetrate with the gaze what is hidden and unknown. Secrecy I argue remains inseparable from penetration: the phallocentric affirmation of the regime. For building up my case I use materials such as oral history interviews, secret police archives and memoirs. CEU
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